As someone who has been a chronic fangirl my whole life (shout out to Strictly Come Dancing 2012), I found Over The Top to be a ridiculously fantastic, and unfortunately quite relatable, show.
Presented by comedic genius and fangirl extraordinaire Jessica Durand, Over The Top takes the audience on a journey through the murky, absurd, and absolutely hilarious depths of online fanfiction.
Durand positions us in — bear with me — World War I, within the lens of a 500,000-word Downton Abbey/World War 1 fanfiction. She plays her own self-insert character within this fanfiction: Peggy, a maid who has decided to move to the trenches and become a nurse. Kermit the Frog is involved somewhere too, and Ms Trunchbull has an affair with Nanny McPhee.
The results are, as you might expect, absolutely bonkers, but the show works unbelievably well. It is immersive, as people are picked from the audience to read in for characters in the fanfic, and Durand switches expertly between addressing the audience as herself and acting as Peggy within the epic fanfic-within-a-fanfic.
Durand’s comedy is quick, endearing and charming. She controls the jokes masterfully, and her piece is exceptionally well-timed and sharply written, whilst being visually genius. From costume changes to trench warfare ambiance, Over The Top has it all.
A true highlight of the show was character edits projected onto the back screen. The characters in question were so wonderfully random, and this use of tech brilliantly encapsulated the essence of contemporary online fandom.
It also helps provide necessary context for those who may not be aware of the inner machinations of fan fiction culture, in which Downton Abbey characters are gay (based on vibes) amidst World War I.
I had naively questioned what interest the eighty-year-old woman sat next to me might have in a show about fanfiction — something I perceived to be a specific curse on Millennial and Gen-Z women. However, I quickly realised that she, too, was a complete fangirl, and her interjections of “I remember that episode!” and “oh, that character is a right–” proved that Durand’s comedy is wonderfully accessible, even to those who were not on Tumblr in the 2010s.
A moment towards the play sees the façade crack a little, and we are brought into the world of Durand as a teenager. It is a brief but emotional reminder within all of the chaos of the saving power of niche media, and a nod to the escape which young misfits tend to find online.
Jessica Durand revels in her own absurdity and her show is completely joyous. She is a true star of comedy. Over The Top is a stellar Fringe debut — I just hope she has some even more left-field fanfiction in her repertoire for next year!
Image by Rebecca Need-Menear, provided to The Student as press.